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Allow to me quote myself from something I said a little over three months ago: “In all likelihood we will see a new logo in the next year or two.” Boy was I wrong as a drunk at the race track. It wasn’t two years. Or a year. Barely a financial quarter has passed before United Airlines — the resulting moniker of the merger between it and Continental — changed its logo. And if you thought it couldn’t get worse, bet again.

The new logo displays the combined company’s brand name in capital letters (UNITED) in a custom sans-serif font, joined with the global mark which has represented Continental’s brand image since 1991.

A corresponding update of the combined airline’s aircraft livery will adopt Continental’s livery, colors and design, including its blue-gold-white globe image on the tail, combined with the new-style UNITED name on the fuselage.— Press Release

This has to be one of the poorest handled identity mergers at this scale. To be fair, there is nothing inherently wrong with the dull extended, bold sans serif that has been introduced but it represents a kind of corporate stubbornness to not admit that a perfectly decent extended, bold sans serif already exists that works perfectly with the word UNITED. Why create a poor man’s version of that is somewhat incomprehensible and then to tout it as “Ooh la la, it’s custom, baby” is gratuitously sans merit.

Despite the fear of being wrong once again, I give this knock-off identity 18 months.

Reviewed
August 12, 201008.12.10by Armin

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Follow-up: United Airlines

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Allow to me quote myself from something I said a little over three months ago: \"In all likelihood we will see a new logo in the next year or two.\" Boy was I wrong as a drunk at the race track. It wasn't two years. Or a year. Barely a financial quarter has passed before United Airlines — the resulting moniker of the merger between it and Continental — changed its logo. And if you thought it couldn't get worse, bet again.